As the world descends on Toronto for WorldPride, a 10-day festival of joy and celebration, one event stands out as a powerful reminder that the struggle for acceptance and rights for the LGBT community remains a work in progress.

The WorldPride Human Rights Conference from June 25 to 27 will feature dozens of sessions on issues ranging from activism, refugees, families and resurgent efforts to repress the burgeoning LGBT rights movement.

The event will include more than 400 delegates, including 180 speakers from more than 50 countries around the world, from places as far flung as Russia, Uganda, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Even before the conference kicks off with its first session on June 25, Brenda Cossman, director of the University of Toronto’s Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, co-sponsor of the event, said it is already an outstanding success.

The conference has been sold out for weeks, although the public is welcome to plenary sessions which will held at the end of each day.

“We’ve got a lot going on,” said Cossman, a professor of law at the university and long-time community activist.

Particularly inspiring are the range of speakers from across the globe who have led the struggle for LGBT rights, and, in some cases, are still putting their lives on the line.

Among the “path-breakers” who will be in attendance:

Johanna Siguorardottir, who in 2009 became Iceland’s first female prime minister and the first world’s openly lesbian head of state

Edith Windsor, whose activism led to the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the federal Defence of Marriage Act unconstitutional in 2013

Dr. Frank Mugisha, a prominent LGBT activist in Uganda, a country which recently adopted harsh new laws against homosexuality

Monica Mbaru, a senior judge and long-time activist in Kenya

Monica Gessen, Russia’s most prominent LGBT activist and a vocal opponent of President Vladimir Putin, whose government has recently enacted a number of anti-gay measures

Tamara Adrian, a law professor and prominent advocate for transgender rights in Venezuela.

While LGBT rights issues have gained prominence throughout the world, in many places, the debate has sparked a backlash. This is true of countries such as Russia, Uganda and Nigeria, where recent laws have dealt a major setback to a movement seeking greater acceptance and protection of human rights.

And while Russia and parts of Africa are considered hot spots for new repressive laws, more than 80 countries around the world still have laws on the books that outlaw homosexual conduct, Cossman noted.

She sees a number of common factors in countries where new anti-gay laws have been passed, an effort by politicians, Putin among them, to solidify their own power by attacking minorities.

“In many places, (the backlash) is also a very much an anti-Western gesture, that gay rights are Western concept,” Cossman added.

Jamaican Maurice Tomlinson is among the conference delegates and speakers.

A corporate lawyer, Tomlinson said he decided to lend his expertise to the island nation’s two largest LGBT rights groups because every other lawyer decided it would be “professional suicide.”

“I eventually had to flee Jamaica, because of the publication of my wedding to husband in Canada by a Jamaican newspaper,” Tomlinson recalled.

During a recent visit, Tomlinson narrowly escaped an attack by a mob, when, travelling in a car, he was recognized by a passerby.

“I still go back (to Jamaica), but it’s not fun anymore. It’s really just to do work. Before, I would be able to go to Jamaica and in addition to doing work, I’d be able to do social events and hang out with friends,” he said.

“But, because of the death threats I’ve received, now, when I go to Jamaica, I generally have to have a dedicated driver, I go straight to the hotel and then I go from the hotel to the court and then back to the hotel and then back to the airport.

“It’s like being in prison.”

Still, Tomlinson has there is some reason to hope that things are changing in his part of the world. He was recently granted special leave to challenge Jamaica’s anti-sodomy laws.

The Caribbean Court of Justice also recently ruled that laws in Trinidad and Belize, which ban gay immigrants, create a “perception of prejudice,” he noted. A formal challenge of those laws will be heard later this year.

Tomlinson said he was heartened recently to see The Gleaner, Jamaica’s largest newspaper, support the concept of marriage equality for same-sex couples with no prodding from the country’s LGBT community.

“As a friend said to me, when you’re in the midst of change, it’s hard to see it because you can only see the hardship that people are experiencing,” Tomlinson said. He and others are working to assist ostracized LGBT youth who live in the sewers of the country’s capital, Kingston.

Tomlinson believes strongly in the value of the WorldPride human rights conference and its ability to bring together a far flung community of activists.

“It is important to have this conference at this time, because we’ve seen many advances for LGBT rights in certain parts of the world, but we’ve also seen some very dramatic reversals.

“So we need the world to be aware of what’s happening and what people can do to affect the kind of change that we all wish to see, which is a more inclusive society.”

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Impressive that this conference was held right here in Toronto and it has a very diverse global list of speakers. Hard to believe Maurice Tomlinson was punished and is reluctant to return to his home country simply for marrying the person he loved. I do believe him but it's very sad.